The Human Rights Advocacy Centre Ghana (HRAG) has charged the Ghana Education Service (GES) to sack Madam Charlotte Asante, headmistress of Abetifi Presbyterian Senior High School in the Kwahu East District of the Eastern Region, for allegedly stripping 13 students naked and parading them before their colleagues for being stubborn.
It was gathered that the 13 male students last Friday failed to attend the school’s morning devotion and that they were rather hiding in the dormitory and making noise
Madam Asante, upon hearing that the students were absent from devotion, reportedly instructed the boys’ housemaster and three other teachers to bring them out.
The 13 (names withheld), comprising two final-year students and 11 in form two, were paraded in their boxer shorts before an assembly of the other students.
The headmistress further allegedly instructed the housemaster to take photographs of the students wearing their boxer shorts before their colleagues, including females, totalling over 1,500. She purportedly ordered that three teachers give the almost naked students ten lashes each for misbehaving and flouting the rules and regulations of the school.
But HRAG, in a press statement released Wednesday in Accra and signed by its Executive Director, Robert Akoto Amoafo, strongly condemned the actions of the headmistress
“The Human Rights Advocacy Centre’s attention has been drawn to the torture and inhuman treatment meted out to 13 male students at the Abetifi Presbyterian Senior High School in the Kwahu East District of the Easten Region by Madam Charlotte Asante, the headmistress of the school,” the statement said.
“The Human Rights Advocacy Centre strongly condemns this act and calls for the dismissal of Madam Charlotte Asante,” it charged.
The statement indicated, “Her action on the students is degrading and inhumane. She has defamed and brought the human dignity of these boys into disrepute. Madam Charlotte Asante, in her attempt to mete out disciplinary measure to these students, has rather caused potential psychological trauma to these boys which may take several years to erase.
“We therefore call on the Ghana Education Service to dismiss Madam Charlotte Asante from the Ghana Education Service to serve as a deterrent to other personnel in the Service.”
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